


snow falling, so much like stars

by jeannedarc



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: M/M, Rescue, fluffy garbage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-25 01:08:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22287502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeannedarc/pseuds/jeannedarc
Summary: Johnny's car breaks down. Lucky for him, a cute tow driver is en route to his location, and he's got more than just a few pickup lines to make the day a little brighter.
Relationships: Suh Youngho | Johnny/Xiao De Jun | Xiao Jun
Comments: 6
Kudos: 69
Collections: NCT Rarepair Winter Bingo





	snow falling, so much like stars

**Author's Note:**

> filling slots: **ticket home, hot chocolate**
> 
> OOF i have been sitting with this one for weeks and i am so sorry for not sharing it sooner  
> anyway as usual this is a xiaojohn deficit world and i for one would just like to be of assistance. have you seen the xiaojohn today i think the xiaojohn was delicious.   
> thank you as always to maddie for being a wonderful beta and encouraging me to stand on my own! ♥  
> this story is definitely linked to [the weather outside is frightful](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22006138) but i don't think you need to read that to enjoy this one!

Johnny's car is a threat in motion. It's what he's always been told, though he's laughed it off, a faith that no one else could possibly replicate ready in the front of his mind. Yes, his sedan is old. Not near as old as he is, but old enough that it creaks beneath him when he drives it. Still, it’s young enough to make long road trips, get him back and forth for the holidays, when the campus is mostly closed and there's not much to do and his mom's voice gets smaller and sadder every time he tells her 'soon'.

That faith is what gets him through a house party of the slightly less wild variety -- that, and a promise that he’ll be home the next day.

His car, he tells himself when he hits the road before the sun’s even up properly, will make it across state lines.

At least, that's what he believes until the snow starts to fall, heavy flakes that adhere to his windshield, and the rattling begins. It's an eerie noise, like a ghost has moved into his engine, not that he's an expert on either ghosts or engines. He can feel it vibrate beneath his feet, so that rules out what he handily refers to as 'software problems'.

He calls his roommate once he crosses state lines, the phone gripped tight in his hand when he presses it to his ear. It's a long trip, and he's made it more than a few times, but the car has never made this noise before, this odd grinding with which Johnny isn't particularly familiar.

"Hello?" he asks when the call connects, but he can hear laughter in the background. Someone else is already there. Johnny presses his fingers to his forehead, drags them through his hair, tries his best to keep from making a mess of this. It's not fair of him to interrupt Taeyong's precious free time.

The rattling of the car doesn't stop, not when he hangs up the phone, and not the 57 miles the damned thing manages to get through before he doesn't feel safe driving it anymore. Weird. He's never thought to feel unsafe in his own car.

He calls his insurance company, and buckles in for the long haul. Good for him he's got such a thoughtful roomie, loving and caring enough to pack those little hand warmers that Johnny has to crack into like glowsticks. _Just in case,_ Taeyong had said. Taeyong, as per usual, had been right, and Johnny had been too thoughtlessly casual.

He calls Taeyong again, gets an answer this time, concern woven into his best friend's voice. "What's wrong?"

"Car's broken down. Waiting on the tow or whatever." Johnny grits the words out from between clenched teeth, tired just to think of the effort that speaking requires when he's out here quite literally freezing his balls off. "Just wanted to thank you for packing up for me."

"Oh. It's cold, right? You aren't running the car, are you?" He can almost hear the quirk of Taeyong's eyebrow, wants to reach through the phone and shake him by the shoulders.

"No, just... out here. Cold. Using those hand warmers. Thanks for that."

"There's a thermos in the passenger seat,” says Taeyong, a bit distracted, the noise in the background quieting. “Got soup in it, the one I made the night before last. Sorry I didn't think to give another one full of coffee, but at least it should still be kind of hot?" Taeyong pauses, and there's a gentle murmuring. Must be his company. "Do you need someone to come out there?"

The snow has covered his car, mostly, and the windshield wipers gave up some time ago in their valiant fight to keep the windshield clear so that he might be able to see the approach of whatever tow truck is coming to his rescue. Johnny shivers, groans, shakes his head. The offer, no matter how tempting, isn't one he can take up in good conscience, not when the world is coming down on all their heads. "No, Yongie, I'll be fine, don't worry about me. Spend time with your friend, okay?" And everything clicks into place a little too late: tiny Mark Lee, passed out on their couch when they'd gotten up early this morning, a blanket tucked around him. Taeyong's doing, of course -- how could it be anything but? "Use protection or whatever. I'll call you when the tow comes."

He hangs up before he has to interpret Taeyong's indignant squawking.

The estimated arrival time for his tow comes and goes. He can't really be angry about it, but Johnny has to wonder how someone is going to be able to dig his car out from beneath the veritable mountain of snow it's become in the past hour or so. It's his own fault, anyway, waiting to stop until the storm had gotten worse, thinking he'd be able to make it only to chicken out. Not to mention, he'd strayed from the freeways, everyone going home in clusters sure to make the road a fucking nightmare.

To keep himself warm, Johnny turns on some music, his phone protesting, stating it's not got much battery life left. He rustles in the floorboards for his charger, ends up finding the soup Taeyong had kindly promised him, and doesn't come up with a cord at all. No worries, he figures, shrugging. Whoever's coming to pick him up probably has a charger of their own, and he'll be sure to tip extra to whatever sorry bastard has to come rescue his dumb princess ass this close to the holidays, in the middle of a snowstorm.

Leaning back against his seat, Johnny sings to himself, crooning out some indie song a friend had recommended to him. Not his style, but soothing. He doesn't even notice he's fallen asleep until it happens.

And then comes the knock on the window, sharp, crisp against the howling wind overhead. He makes a startled sound as he jolts awake, and peering into his driver's side window is the most darling pair of eyes he's ever seen. Johnny makes another, less concerned sound, and forces the door to open. "Hi," he greets, awkward as a person can be.

This man -- if man is even the right word; the kid looks young enough to still be in high school though Johnny's pretty sure labour laws would correct him to the contrary -- is so handsome, and layered in wool and fleece, and he looks so cosy with his cheeks all pinked. "Hi," he greets, offering a wave, far too casual for the sorry soul that'd come out in a blizzard on the country-est of country roads. "I'm, um, I'm your tow driver." There's a knot of concern between his finely-honed eyebrows. Johnny definitely Does Not notice the eyebrows, nor the flash of a smile, perfect and pristine, that he draws out simply by virtue of being.

Johnny realises all too late that he's doing that thing he does, the one Taeyong and their mutual best friend are always making fun of him for, where he mentally waxes poetic about strangers so he'll have something to add to his journal later. That's fine. He's only a little embarrassed, tugs the edge of his beanie closer to his ears. "Hi," he greets at last, when the silence stretches on too long for any sane, rational human's liking. "I'm sorry, I just. I'm really cold?"

"You _look_ really cold," singsongs the driver. "Do you want to get in the truck? I've been running all morning, and it's pretty warm in there."

"Oh, don't... don't you need help?" Johnny blinks a couple times, and the snow has stopped, and he blames his narrowed eyes on the sunbeam that gleams off a nearby snowbank. Certainly not suspicion that he's being treated too nicely.

"If I do, I can ask," says the driver, airy beyond reason. "But you were asleep before I got here. How long has it been since you called?"

Johnny goes to check his phone, then notes that the music has stopped and that his phone is dead. "I dunno what time it is," he says, embarrassed, shoulders raising to his ears. "I called at around eleven."

"Oh, it's around one, now."

One? He'd promised his mother he'd be there by three, when his car was still functional and he wasn't stuck with a stranger on the side of a road he only kind of knows thanks to the modern convenience of GPS. "I was asleep for...like an hour?"

"You must be freezing," and here the driver isn't waiting. "Where are your keys?" he asks, cupping Johnny's face in his hands. He's small, which adds to the idea that he must be young, but he thumbs over the apples of Johnny's stinging cheeks like he matters.

It's been a long, long time since someone has treated Johnny like he matters. Well, Taeyong aside. That's his best friend, his partner in crime, and Johnny's doing that waxing thing again. "I'll go get in the truck," he mumbles, sheepish, colour creeping up his cheeks that probably has nothing to do with the weather.

The driver smiles, something bright and sunshine, and Johnny's blinded all over again. "Okay, then go," he says, letting go, and Johnny's made a lot of regrettable decisions, but right about now giving in to demands seems pretty close to the top of the list.

It takes a little while, Johnny rubbing his hands together before the tow truck's heater to get the feeling back into his fingers, but eventually he feels the telltale, tectonic shifting of the earth beneath his butt that lets him know his car's been loaded up. The driver joins him not a moment too soon; the music that had been playing low over the speakers, acoustic winter songs with a sad vibe, have finally picked up into something more cheerful.

Johnny remembers his soup, and grimaces. "Hey, I know it's a lot to ask, but is there any way I could get into my car? Just the floor of the passenger's seat. My friend packed me a lunch."

The driver looks at him sideways for a moment, then nods. "Yeah, go on."

The snow has picked back up again, but Johnny makes a quick errand of it, feeling blindly into the compartment where a guest's feet might fit in order to find the meal. When he brings it back, hops into the truck a second time, he pours soup into the cup that serves as a lid, offers it to his driver. "I'm Johnny, by the way," he says, as if he's been meaning to do it the entire time.

His driver and practical saviour flashes that bright grin again. "Dejun. Nice to meet you, Johnny. Where are we going?" He doesn't put the truck in gear and, in fact, takes the cup into his hands to sip at the broth. His eyes go wide with recognition. "Also, who made this, and can I kiss them on their face?"

"You can't kiss my roommate on the face, no," and Johnny laughs, "but I'll send him my regards. Do you happen to have a phone charger?" He's already spotted it, having been alone in the truck so long, but doesn't want to be a snoop or a jerk. It's the holidays, or something.

"You can't kiss my roommate on the face, no," and Johnny laughs, "but I'll send him my regards. Do you happen to have a phone charger?" He's already spotted it, having been alone in the truck so long, but doesn't want to be a snoop or a jerk. It's the holidays, or something. Luckily, Dejun hands him the end of the cord, giving him A Look which he Totally Deserves. "Thank you very much."

"So what were you doing all the way out here?" Dejun asks, still not putting the truck into gear. He's actually taken to swirling the contents of his cup around in the hopes they will get warmer, judging by the giant, unspoken plea Johnny sees in his beautifully expressive eyes. "You look like you're in college--"

"Do I?" Johnny has never been self-conscious about his age.

"Or, really, uh, your car does. Your _car_ looks like it's in college, but most of the college kids I know aren't mature enough to have insurance."

What does that mean? Does Dejun just... know a lot of college kids? Are they all dumb? Johnny looks at him, through him, mystified, brain going galaxy before shutting down in an attempt to figure out this particular mystery. "I'm in grad school. I have a roommate who makes sure I eat every day." He pauses, then tips the cup up to sample the broth over which Dejun had momentarily lost his mind. He's right, and Johnny remembers tasting it the day it had been cooked. Something about Taeyong's food gets more magical as time passes. "What about you? You look like you're in high school--"

"I'm _not_ in high school," Dejun deadpans, but there's inauthenticity to it. Johnny almost laughs.

"I didn't know a lot of kids in high school who had blue collar jobs," Johnny amends.

"I'm twenty entire years old," groans Dejun, finishing the last of what's been given him only to hand the cup back to Johnny. He finally gets the truck to moving. "Where are we going?" he asks, a second time, not that Johnny had been doing a great job of listening the first time.

"Oh, uh, I dunno. I'm not familiar with the area. Where's the nearest repair shop?"

"That's my friend's spot." Dejun lights up. Johnny thinks it's cute, how anyone could perk like that just at the mere mention of friends. "I'll take you up to see him and he'll let you know what the issue is."

Only when Johnny realises that time has passed does a particular sort of panic grip his lungs: the slow-simmering kind, the one that'll be clawing out of his throat sooner rather than later. "I was going home to see my parents," he says, so softly that he has to strain in order to hear himself, "and now... what do you think's wrong with it?"

"What's the problem?" Dejun gives him a sideways glance, totally unfased by the sorry motherfucker who passes him with a screech, middle finger up all the while. Merry Christmas, happy holidays, thinks Johnny bitterly.

Instead of focusing on this, Johnny explains the rattling, the feeling of clunkiness he'd had under his feet until he'd had the good sense to stop. Dejun hisses into his own mouth, a pained sound, and says, "Sounds like it might be something big. Framework. Can't guarantee you'll be seeing your family today."

Johnny's spirits dampen immediately, matching the mood outside, which has quickly shifted back to cloudy and grey in accordance with the snow pouring down. "I promised my mom," he mumbles, biting on his bottom lip.

Dejun just sort of hums, and tips his head. "We'll see what we can do about a rental--"

"Please, did you not just hear what I was saying about college?" And it comes off a bit bitter, but then, Johnny's feeling it. "I don't know. I have to check my account. I don't think I can afford it right now, everything I have is probably going to go into fixing the car..."

"Your parents won't pick it up?"

"I wouldn't ask them," Johnny retorts, and he really, really regrets how inadvertently rude he's being right now, but his mood has dropped in a significant way in the past two minutes.

Dejun, though, looks at him like he's something to be admired. "Okay. Well. You can take a nap if you want. It's going to be a little while; we have to go slow because of the conditions on the road, and my friend's spot is further away than you'd think."

Johnny laughs, a somewhat sarcastic sound. "My fault for coming all the way out here." He slumps against the passenger door, arm tucked up beneath himself and folded fist resting under his chin. "Sorry. I just. Everything's really complicated, and it's Christmas, you know?"

"Yeah, I know," murmurs Dejun, reaching over the truck's middle console to press a comforting hand to the curve of Johnny's shoulder, lingering just a little too long. "You don't seem like the type who'd sleep in a car. Is that right?"

"It is," Johnny agrees, and melts almost immediately. "I just... this was my one chance to be home, you know? I miss my mom. My dad, too, but don't tell him I told you."

"I'll take it to my grave," answers Dejun solemnly, and Johnny doesn't miss how his hand hasn't left Johnny's shoulder. "We'll figure it out. Let me help."

"No, I can't do that," Johnny says with a whine, "you've already come and moved my car out of a fuckin'... snowbank, you know?" Guilt rings his edges, pride its close contender, and the combination is a heady one that he can't deny even if he wants to just for the sake of getting out.

"We'll figure it out," insists Dejun, and that's the last Johnny hears of it. Instead he answers pointed questions about his mother, whether he's got siblings, whether he's dating his roommate.

The last one has him spluttering. He couldn't imagine dating Taeyong if someone paid him. "Not that Taeyong is bad," he points out, "just that I really don't think we could date without somehow committing acts of criminal violence on one another."

That draws a laugh out of Dejun, and it's a sweet sound, a comfort to which Johnny doesn't feel particularly entitled. He cherishes it anyway, a gift that he hadn't really thought he deserved.

The ride ends up feeling a lot shorter than promised, and soon Dejun is unhitching Johnny's car into a garage that looks as if it might have seen better days. On the outside, anyway. Inside it's pristine, restored, something out of a magazine profiling garages, not that Johnny knows a whole lot about it. "This is your friend's spot?" he asks Dejun, nudging him with a shoulder.

Dejun nudges back. "My friend really loves what he does, and has someone willing to help him out with whatever he needs to get it done."

Johnny can imagine that. It's an easier affair when said friend steps out from some cloistered segment of the waiting room, a door closing behind him.

"Hey, who's your boyfriend?" asks the tall, almost posh-looking kid who leans against the counter, and suddenly Johnny is uncomfortable.

Dejun just laughs and laughs. "Shut up, he's not my boyfriend _yet_." And he reaches across the counter to messily drag fingers through his friend's otherwise pristine hair. "Maybe he won't be if you keep talking like that."

The man -- the patch sewn into his jumpsuit reads _Hendery_ which, for the record, doesn't seem like a real name at all -- laughs along with him. "You know me. Always out to ruin your prospects. What's up?"

They talk car jargon for a few minutes, and Johnny doesn't know the first thing about framework, or suspension systems, or any of the other Technical Terms they keep throwing around. He ends up sitting in a chair across the room from them, flipping through a Car And Driver magazine that seems to have seen better days, the inside of his bottom lip caught between his teeth.

He thinks about his phone, still left in Dejun's tow truck, and how he should call his mother, tell her he's going to have to get a hotel room nearby instead of coming to have dinner with her like he'd promised. It's so much pressure, but he can take it. Four years of school had been way tougher than disappointing his mom.

Not.

But then Dejun is right there in the next chair, hand on his shoulder, a dumb grin on his face. "I can hear you worrying all the way outside," he says, glancing around like it's confidential information. "It's going to be okay, you know? We're going to fix this, even if it takes what it takes."

Johnny doesn't have the energy to decipher that. "Just... can I call my mom?"

"I wouldn't do that just yet," sings Dejun, and he's so fucking _musical_ , how can anyone be that bright and chipper when the sky is falling right outside the window? "I was going to ask, actually, where do you live?"

"Oh, uh..." Johnny rattles off his address. Nervous habit. "It's about three hours away, still, I think, depending on where we are." It’s embarrassing, to admit that he doesn’t know where he is, but Dejun doesn’t seem horribly rattled by it. At least that’s fine. “I just, if I’m not going to make it home, I really need to tell her, she’s expecting me by--”

“Johnny,” Dejun says, a little twitch dragging at the corner of his mouth. “I’m going to put you in my truck and I’m going to take you home myself, if that’s alright.”

And see, Johnny hadn’t really thought of that, the notion that he would see his mother today so far abandoned he can’t even see the light reflecting from it, so to speak. So when Dejun puts it so plainly, so casually, he has to take a moment. A step back. He blinks, heart thrumming against the inside of his chest, making him warm all over. 

“Really?” he asks, too aware of how pitiful he must sound to a complete and total stranger.

Dejun just laughs. “Yeah, really. Get in. We’re leaving your car here, and I’ll leave you the information to come get it in a couple days, when it’s ready.”

Hendery, watching this, busts in: “Are you two going to kiss?” 

Johnny gives Dejun a look, a question in his eyes, and is rewarded by Dejun’s arms looping around his neck and pulling him in. “I’m not gonna kiss you for the first time in front of that weirdo,” he says, like Johnny can’t feel the breath spilling from his lips. “But I would be okay with kissing you, if you were down.”

“Yeah,” agrees Johnny, giving Hendery the absolute shadiest of side-eyes. “Yeah, maybe later? You know, when I can breathe again?”

///

They make it before the night falls proper around them, when the sun is still something silver spilling in the passenger’s side window. Johnny’s arms and legs creak with exhaustion when he slides out of the truck, and he yelps when his feet sink into the snow like it’s a cartoon.

Dejun, for what it’s worth, has the most beautiful laugh, and thinks this is the funniest thing in the world. Though Johnny has always been a clown, this in particular is really helping his ego. 

The tow truck looks so huge and imposing in the otherwise empty driveway. His mom. He’d texted her awhile ago, sometime just after crossing state lines, and let her know that he was going to be late, that someone had been nice enough to help out in getting him home at a somewhat reasonable hour. She’d been fine when she’d responded, but now... 

He tips his head just slightly at realising she isn’t here; the car being gone means that she’s either left his father alone (unlikely) or that they’d both gone out. Weird.

“Can I walk you to your door?” asks Dejun, who doesn’t know that anything is wrong or, if he does, is merciful enough not to let on. He offers a hand, helps pull Johnny from the powder dusting the world beneath them both. It isn’t super helpful, Dejun being tiny and losing his balance and falling into a perfect snow angel just beside where Johnny is stuck like a beanpole. 

They laugh and laugh and laugh, until Johnny’s crying and his entire face is red.

Then Dejun rolls closer in the snow, and he looks so… pretty, so delicate, not at all like the teenager Johnny had taken him for not but a few short hours ago. He cups his frigid hands around Johnny’s burning cheeks and says, “Hey, can I have that kiss, now?”

Damn. Out-bolded again.

Johnny, in answer, nods, leans in, carefully presses his mouth to Dejun’s, and it’s like sunshine. Like angels singing. Like getting home just in time for a holiday dinner with the people you love most. It’s all those things, and Johnny’s favourite coffee, and so much more.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t get to relish in that, interrupted as they are by the glaring beam of headlights in both their periphery. “John!” his mother calls, and when Johnny looks up she’s hanging out the passenger side window.

Oops.

He finally manages to push himself out of the snow, and when Dejun trots along behind him, Johnny can only shoot a puzzled glance over his shoulder, asking something he doesn’t really need the answer to. “Mom, I just got here like… ten minutes ago?” he says with a dip of his head. Then he stands aside, because his mother’s eagle-eyed gaze isn’t meant for him but rather the boy her beloved son had been kissing not two seconds before. “This is Dejun. He’s the one that got me here.”

Johnny’s mother gives Dejun a long glance, and then grins. “Would he like to stay for dinner? Your father and I, we went out to get extra, in case he was hungry. Have you eaten? Did that roommate of yours send you out with food?”

And Johnny just laughs, embarrassed and, ultimately, grateful when Dejun inches closer, links their pinkies together. “Yes, Mom, I’m fine, I promise,” he sings, practically tipping over in his effort to rest his temple atop Dejun’s head. “We’re fine.”

Dejun, for the record, is beaming so brightly he may as well become the star atop a Christmas tree, and Johnny doesn’t usually bring people home for dinner, but he can’t say he regrets a single thing. “I would be honoured to sit at your table,” Dejun tells Johnny’s mother, “since you’ve been kind enough to provide for me, and provide your son’s company today.”

Johnny looks away pointedly, pretending not to blush.

///

That night, sitting before a fire, tuckered out on home-cooked food, the question arises of where Dejun will sleep, since it’s far too late to drive and the snow has picked up again. “You aren’t sleeping together under my roof,” says his mother with a wicked grin and a significant raise of her eyebrows. “I said it and I meant it.”

“Mom,” Johnny says, insistent, though said insistence is dulled a little bit by the hot chocolate he’d spiked with rum he’d brought from home, now sitting cooling in his mug. “Mom, _please_ stop going out of your way to embarrass me.”

Dejun, sprawled out on the floor and watching the fire, doesn’t seem to think too much of it. “If that’s what makes you comfortable, Mrs. Suh,” he agrees, “then that’s fine. I can just stay here on the couch if you want.”

Johnny’s mom, pleased with that, nods and makes her way back to the kitchen to clean up the remnants of the drink-making.

“What are you drinking?” asks Dejun, who hadn’t seen Johnny’s old hat trick. When he takes a sip from it -- without asking, mind, though Johnny has to admit he finds it charming -- his entire face turns into a craggy wrinkle. Johnny laughs. “Oh my god, that’s _disgusting_.”

“Warms the old bones,” jokes Johnny in a feigned voice like a crotchety old man, taking his mug back and draining it with ease. “Are you really going to sleep on the couch?” he asks after a long pause, the only interruption in the silence that of the fire singing its song. 

“Only if I get to put you to bed,” replies Dejun, with an air of confidence that Johnny honestly finds kind of hot. “If I can, I mean. If kissing isn’t off the table.”

Johnny thinks awhile -- about the day, and about holiday miracles, and about how his last kiss with Dejun had ended up some awkward abortion he’d really like to complete -- and grins. “Yeah, I could use some goodnight kisses,” he says softly, sliding from the chair he’s been occupying to sit next to Dejun. Dejun stares up at Johnny with wide eyes, head in his lap and Johnny’s fingers threading through his hair.

“You’re pretty,” says Dejun, like he’s been meaning to all day and just now remembered.

Johnny smiles, something soft and tender. “You’re pretty,” he answers.

It’s like this that Dejun falls into a light doze, mouth slightly ajar, and Johnny bows in on himself to kiss the space just between Dejun’s eyebrows. “Prettiest,” he whispers.

And he stays like that for a long, long, _long_ time, til way after his legs fall asleep and he starts to feel a little woozy with exhaustion himself. He can’t bring himself to disturb his personal miracle, not when he looks so pretty sleeping.

**Author's Note:**

> as always:  
> [twitter](http://twitter.com/appiarian)  
> [cc](http://curiouscat.me/chahakyeon)


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